Monocrystal materials known in the art have outstanding mechanical characteristics, such as tensile and shearing strength.
Austrian Patent 259 242 describes a sintered hard metal consisting of hard materials and binders, containing hard materials in the form of needle-shaped monocrystals in an amounts of at least 0.1%, preferably 0.5 to 1.5% of the entire content of hard materials. In order to produce these sintered hard metals, WC in the form of needle-shaped monocrystals is added to the hard-material component prior to grinding. After the addition of a binder from the iron group, the hard metal mixture is pressed and sintered with the formation of a liquid phase. However, it is disadvantageous that the monocrystalline WC dissolves to a great extent in the binder phase (compare German publication "Metall", July 1974, Part 7). The hard-metal monocrystals are not able to achieve a noticeable improvement of wear resistance, especially because the maximum amount of hard-metal monocrystals to be added is set by the proportion of grains of hard material (grains with a mean diameter of less than 2 .mu.m) to be replaced.